If open source isn't sustainable, maybe software freedom is?

Description

There’s been substantial recent discussion, both inside and outside the open source community, about the “sustainability” of the FLOSS infrastructure. Explosive growth in the technology sector has yielded a small trickle-down effect to increase interest, funding, and adoption of FLOSS, while concerns about highly public bugs have jarred those who were not aware of the importance of FLOSS in every computer user’s daily life. Nearly the exact same process occurred during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. Now as it was then, the FLOSS projects that fuel the phenomenon remain the goose laying the golden eggs, which allows (usually proprietary) new technologies built atop them to succeed. The difference today is the keen awareness of technology industry leaders of FLOSS processes, governance, and culture.

Bradley Kuhn walks you through the sustainability debate in open source. The FLOSS communities now experience a complex cultural, financial, and leadership melding of the Silicon Valley startup mentality with the traditional, radical values of software liberation. Since this occurred slowly and organically, we’re often stymied when we seek to delineate ideologies and identify corporate manipulation. At the very moment of its greatest success, open source now exhibits many flaws and cracks. Fortunately, the strategies that historically sustained our communities on tiny budgets centered in charities remain viable and are poised for resurgence. You’ll learn about this complex political challenge our community faces and gain concrete ideas to prepare for changes on the horizon.